Krauthammer’s Take: Retaking Ramadi Important Because ‘It’s All About Psychology’

Retaking Ramadi won’t “tip the balance,” but the victory nonetheless plays an important role in ISIS’s eventual defeat, Charles Krauthammer argued tonight. “In a war like this, it’s all about psychology,” Krauthammer said on Monday’s Special Report. “It’s what Osama bin Laden talked about, who is the strong horse? Who is the weak horse?”

Krauthammer said a growing sense ISIS is losing ground helps create a new narrative: The more you get reports and stories of ISIS losing Sinjar, losing — there’s a dam in the north of Syria which was recaptured by the rebels with the Kurds, lost by ISIS, it was a source of electricity, it’s a source of power, it cuts off some of their routes. The fact that you have Ramadi and other areas. If the story line changes to ISIS, which had expanded exponentially over 18 months, is now shrinking and retreating that, I think, is a huge psychological blow.

“These eschatological movements, the millennialist movements that are bringing on the apocalypse, live on the idea of success,” he said. “And the minute you can reverse the story, consistently, even if they aren’t in and of themselves strategically decisive, but one after another and you change the psychology, I think it undermines ISIS and that sets the table for ultimately taking them out. But it’s a long process.”